In CNY, it's all about lake-effect: The words can send a chill through local residents.

It's the reason Central New Yorkers spend more than 200 days a year under a gloomy, gray canopy.
It's also the reason Syracuse is the nation's snowiest metropolitan area, and fourth wettest city.
It's the lake-effect.
Those two words send shivers down the spine of any weather-wise Central New Yorker.
Perhaps more than any other factor, Lake Ontario influences the region's weather. The result usually is not pretty.
The massive inland sea only 40 miles from Syracuse sends plenty of moisture
- in the form of clouds, rain and snow -- to the skies over Central New York.
The lake-effect is most dramatic in winter. When wind, temperature and lake
meet under the right conditions, the snow can be blinding.
Even more frustrating is the randomness of lake-effect. While the lake may
unleash a furious storm that buries a city such as Oswego, skies could be
clear and sunny only 10 miles away in Fulton.
In short, lake-effect storms occur when cold air blows over warmer water in
Lake Ontario. The air pulls moisture from the water. The moisture condenses,
freezes and falls.
When winds are from the northwest, Central New York is socked. Scientists
have known this for decades.
What scientists didn't know until recently was what causes lake-effect
storms to form, or how to predict accurately where the storms will appear.
Now new radar technology is helping meteorologists predict and track
lake-effect storms.
Doppler radar helps spot lake-effect storms where they form, just above
Lake Ontario's surface.
In 1990, scientists used those radars in an attempt to unlock some of
nature's long-held secrets about lake-effect snow.
A $1.2 million study used the new radars to examine snowfall, wind speed,
water temperature and air temperature during lake-effect storms.
Scientists found the big factor was temperature.
Lake-effect snow is most likely when the surface of Lake Ontario is 23
degrees warmer than the air at altitudes up to 5,000 feet.
When cold air moves over the water, warm air rises, cools and condenses
into clouds. This sets up the ideal conditions for lake-effect. But for snow
to occur in Central New York, winds must be from the northwest, blowing from
Canada to Syracuse.
The ideal wind speed for lake-effect is between 10 mph and 25 mph,
scientists found. Those wind speeds allow air to stay over the lake long
enough to pick up heat and moisture, forming clouds.
As any Central New Yorker knows, those ingredients are a recipe for a lot
of snow, real fast.
Lake-effect storms pack the potential for depositing more than 3 feet of
snow at a time. The heavy snow may extend 30 miles or more from Lake Ontario's
shoreline.
Some research suggests that lake-effect storms impact weather more than 250
miles away.
In 1992, one researcher suggested Lake Erie and Lake Huron are responsible
for the moisture that makes up to a quarter of the snowfall on the Appalachian
Mountains of West Virginia.
In Central New York, the lake-effect snow usually falls in bands as narrow
as 1 mile wide.
Usually those bands stay north of Onondaga County, hitting hardest in
Oswego and Jefferson counties. But as winds shift, those bands sometimes dip
south into the Syracuse area.
Most of the storms occur from late November through the middle of March.
But lake-effect has appeared as early as the end of September, and as late as
mid-April.